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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Messrs. Mattingly and Robinson gave a comprehensive account of the theories which have been propounded by numismatists from the time of Eckhel onwards with reference to the history of the earliest coinages of Rome in a paper in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1938: in this they summarized the points on which they claimed that general agreement had been reached as follows. These points are (1) that there is a long chapter of Roman coinage prior to the ‘X’ denarius (i.e. the silver nummus with the mark of value X): (2) that of the silver in that chapter the ROMANO issues come before the ROMA issues and the quadrigatus (i.e. the didrachms bearing on the reverse the legend ROMANO or ROMA): (3) that the victoriate is a drachm of the light series of didrachms: (4) that the small bronze coins associated with ROMANO-ROMA silver represent token coinage: (5) that the bars are approximately contemporary with the first Aes Grave: (6) that the ROMA silver and the light ‘Latin’ Aes Grave run in parallel series: (7) that as the ‘X’ denarius is certainly contemporary with the sextantal as, all heavier asses must be looked for earlier: (8) that the quadrigatus didrachm and the Janus-prow as are more obviously connected with the later coinage of Rome than the Romano-Campanian silver and the ‘Latin’ Aes Grave: and, probably, (9) that the ‘X’ denarius was not struck till many years after 269 B.C.
1 Num. Chron. ser. 5, XVIII, 1. The agreement reached does not cover all the details involved in the summary: in (3) it should be noted that the victoriate has no direct relation with the Romano-Campanian didrachms: it came into being as a drachm on the Illyrian standard, which was exchanged against five asses, and so served ultimately as a quinarius: (5) should run ‘the later bars’, since the Rohbarren are clearly earlier than any Aes Grave: and (7) misunderstands the meaning of the term sextantal as; the ‘X’ denarius was introduced in 217, at the same time as the devaluation of the bronze from the Iibral to the sextantal standard; but asses weighing only one-sixth of a libra had been issued much earlier: (2) has now been jettisoned by Mr.Mattingly, (JRS XXXV, 1945, 73Google Scholar).
2 For the literary evidence see JRS XXVIII, 1928, 70Google Scholar.
3 For specimens of aes rude see the British Museum Catalogue of Coins of the Roman Republic (hereafter BMC) 1, 1, 2.
4 See E. J. Haeberlin, Aes Grave (hereafter Haeberlin) 10 ff.
5 Aristotle, Politics i 9, 7 (Bekker)
6 Pliny, , NH XXXIII, 3Google Scholar. Pliny was doubtless thinking only of Rome and its vicinity.
8 See Lorenzina Cesano, ‘Della circulazione dell' aes grave in Italia’ (Atti e Mem. dell' Ist. Ital. Numismatica 47).
9 Diana, etc., series, Haeberlin 65 ff., 71 ff.; Apollo, etc., series, ib. 81 ff., 83 ff.
10 Haeberlin 76 ff., 93 ff.
12 B. V. Head, Hist. Num. 2 388.
13 Pliny, , NH xxxiii, 44Google Scholar.
14 J. N. Svoronos, Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire 64 ff., 142–4. The coins are probably festival medals rather than ordinary currency, and the sequence numbers would refer to the Arsinoeia; but as the celebration seems to have been annual, the effect of the numeration is that of an era. The suggestion of Svoronos that the Alexandrian decadrachms and the Romano-Greek didrachms were issued under an agreement between Egypt and Rome is hardly worth discussing: there is no record of any trade relationship between the two in the third century B.C., and if there had been it would surely have left some trace in the voluminous collections of commercial and financial documents dating from that century which have been found in Egypt. No Roman coins of the period are known to have been found in Egypt, and no Ptolemaic silver west of the Adriatic: Ptolemaic bronze was exported, presumably as metal, like the copper piastres of Ismail some seventy years ago; but that involves another question.
15 Gentilhomme, P. Le, ‘Les quadrigati nummi’ (Rev. Num. 1934, IGoogle Scholar).
16 A parallel can be found in the fortunes of the gold coinage in England since 1914.
17 The devaluation was slightly more than that of the French franc after 1918: in France the old silver francs continued to circulate at their face value for some years.
18 See ‘Bigati’, JRS XXIV, 1934, 49Google Scholar. The suggestion that ‘bigatus’ was a name given to the half-quadrigatus, which had a quadriga as the reverse which had a quadriga as the reverse type, but was only half the weight of the quadrigatus, by a sort of pun, would make Festus into a humorist. Another suggestion, that the bigatus was the coin with the reverse type of the Dioscuri, might serve if the author of the name was an early Father of the Church, but the Berlin Thesaurus does not mention such a figurative use of the term ‘biga’ before Augustine and Jerome.